The Hydrogen Sonata

oLOU Caconym

oGSV Contents May Differ

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oUe Mistake Not…

oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

oMSV Pressure Drop

oLSV You Call This Clean?

This is all very sad. I especially regret that my own vessels were unable to help in time.

?

xMSV Pressure Drop

I trust the lead ship of your “string” formation, the ROU Learned Response, has no thought of revenging the destruction of the Beats Working. Our comrade brought its end upon itself. The Liseiden are hardly to be commended, but their principal crime was not offing a semi-civilian craft of ours intent on making amends for earlier over-enthusiasm, but destroying the Ronte ships with all their crews. And even that they had an excuse for, miserable and legalistic though it may have been.

?

xGSV Empiricist

Indeed. I think no immediate action need or should be taken against the Liseiden. Our long-term disapproval, and the implications that this will have for their reputation, might prove most effective. The ROU will continue to the combat volume to retrieve the Beats Working’s shuttle with the humans aboard, and check whether any other remains are recoverable, but will not pursue the Liseiden ships.

?

xGSV Contents May Differ

A sealed sub-packet that came with the Beats Working’s mind-state just popped. Seems it was so troubled by its own earlier actions that it’s requesting that it not be reactivated, save for second-party study, comparative or research purposes. Poor lame bastard doesn’t even want to be a ship again.

?

xLOU Caconym

oMSV Pressure Drop

Told you. Five humans: too few.

?

xLOU Caconym

Meanwhile, on Xown?… Reality calling Mistake Not…, yes; we’re talking about you.

?

xUe Mistake Not…

Yes, hi. It’s all getting terribly interesting.

Colonel?

~Ma’am? Agansu replied. The signal-adjunct protocols indicated he was addressing Marshal Chekwri.

~This is Marshal Chekwri.

~I am aware. An honour.

~Your current status?

~I am walking alongside the airship Equatorial 353 awaiting confirmation from the Churkun regarding the disposition of its forces and that of the other side. Media reports indicate that those in charge of the airship have undertaken to open the vessel to the public sometime in the next few minutes. I intend to board then. Or before, should we find our adversaries are already aboard.

~Permit me awareness through your own senses.

~Of course.

The sensation of manipulating aspects of his sensorium was a new one for Agansu, and yet one which felt perfectly natural. He briefly marvelled at all the thought and careful design that must have gone into making it seem routine for something like himself — something which felt like a human — to delve into what was basically its own being and adjust the settings it found there so that a live link of what it was experiencing through its senses was now being sent to another person.

At the same time, Agansu was becoming aware of how many differences there were between his own, biological body and this one. With the possible exception of being considerably heavier than the bio version — despite being precisely the same volume — all the differences were positive.

How much more powerful, capable and sophisticated this new form was. How much more sensitive where it needed to be — his own bio-body held many augmentations and desirable amendments over the human-basic standard, yet in this new one, for example, he could see in much greater detail and over a far greater spread of the electro-magnetic spectrum than the old version was able to — yet how much less vulnerable it was where it didn’t require such sensitivity (this android body felt no pain at all; one’s motivation for avoiding harm was knowing that harm reduced one’s ability to function, while the indication that harm had been inflicted was no more than that — a sign; something to be noted, taken into account and acted upon, but no more).

~Thank you, the marshal sent.

There had been almost no delay between him agreeing to let the marshal see through his eyes and generally sense through his senses, him setting this up and her beginning to receive the data, and yet he had had time to take a look round inside himself as it were and start to appreciate all the differences between his bio-body and this one, and then to think about all this, all before the marshal had thanked him.

Agansu marvelled at how little time it had all taken. His bio-self would hardly have had time for one completed thought in that half-second or so.

~Right, Colonel, the marshal sent, ~we think the Culture people are trying to get to this Ximenyr guy, because of something he has or something he knows about this QiRia person. You have to stop them. That done, you get Ximenyr. Find out what he has, or knows. You may be as brusque as you like.

~I understand, ma’am, Agansu sent, as he looked about the crowds of chanting, singing, dancing people and gaudily painted, bannered and holo’d machines keeping pace with the giant airship.

~Sounds loud, Colonel.

~Yes ma’am.

He was aware of many different sound streams around him, principally dance music emanating from the various vehicles around him on the broad balcony roadway. More seemed to be joining the throng all the time.

~Kind of crowded there, too.

A burst of fireworks lit up the open-work tunnel around the nose of the Equatorial 353. Some set of automatic reactions built into the android he inhabited seemed to be reacting to the fireworks, clenching instinctively as it witnessed nearby mortars firing — nearby mortars which were not flagged as friendly — and their payloads — unguided, highly inaccurately aimed payloads — detonating. Bursts of light were followed by booms, thuds and crackles. A few echoes came back, but most of the sound was swallowed by the huge spaces of the Girdlecity and absorbed within the surrounding patchwork of musics.

Knowing the speed of sound in Xown’s atmosphere and the altitude here, he was able to tell exactly how far away he was from each exploding mortar shell.

~Yes, it is, ma’am. Quite crowded.

~Uh-huh. You know, if anything serious does kick off there, Colonel, you will need to limit civilian casualties as far as possible.

~I am aware of that, ma’am, Agansu sent, thinking how typical — and shameful — it was that a superior